


The Invitation

by galaxysoup



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-29
Updated: 2004-10-29
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:55:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxysoup/pseuds/galaxysoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dumbledore wants Remus to come back to Hogwarts. Remus wants to be left alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Invitation

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted to [Livejournal](http://galaxysoup.livejournal.com/10938.html).

The first letter arrived on a Thursday.

"Dear Remus," it said, in elegant sparkling green ink. "If you are interested, I would like to offer you the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher..."

He folded the letter carefully, then ripped it precisely in halves, quarters, eighths, and sixteenths, until the pieces were too small to hold as he tried to tear them apart. He stacked them neatly and left them in the rubbish bin.

****

The second letter arrived the next week, on Wednesday.

"Remus," it said, still sparkling green. "I realise this is difficult for you..."

He burned that one. He held his wand under it and watched the edges curl, so entranced by the rising smoke that he burned his fingers as well and had to stamp out the letter on the floor where he’d dropped it, lest he set the cottage afire.

When the paper was nothing more than ash and smudge, he made himself a cup of tea and sat down to watch an early summer thunderstorm toss the trees outside his window.

****

The third one came on a Tuesday. Remus took the letter and thanked the owl politely, feeding it bits of toast leftover from breakfast. Once the owl was gone, he carried the letter to the back yard and buried it under a rose bush.

That night, he sat inside by the fire that could never quite reach the coldest places inside him, and read through his first-year copy of _The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_. He laughed at how little he’d known, then, and tried not to be bitter about self-protection being more about solitude than spellcasting.

****

The fourth letter was brought the next Monday by Fawkes, who trilled at Remus from the kitchen window when he tried to throw the letter away unopened. Remus scowled at the bird and said, "I’m not part of your Order any more, you know."

Fawkes hopped onto the counter and regarded Remus with a cocked head, as if trying to decide if Remus needed singing, crying on, or both. Remus sighed.

"It’s better if I’m not around people right now," he said, a little apologetically, and Fawkes watched him for a few more minutes and left.

Remus burned that letter, too – covertly, like he was afraid of offending the phoenix. That night found him sitting cross-legged on his bedroom floor with a shoebox full of Hogwarts pictures, furious at himself for being nostalgic.

****

There might have been a fifth letter, but Remus spent the next Sunday outside in the woods by his cottage. He’d managed, by saving and scrimping and selling off a lot of his parents’ old things, to buy the little house about eight years after Godric’s Hollow. It was tiny and drafty, but it had a roof that didn’t leak and a cellar that could be barricaded and that was really all he was looking for.

For eight years he’d survived. Buying the house meant, maybe, that he was living a little again. All in all, he thought that eight years to start getting over your life being ripped apart wasn’t too unreasonable, really.

****

The next Saturday he found two letters, and almost opened the second one before he recognised Minerva McGonagall’s handwriting. They had been delivered by Fawkes again, who stayed with him the whole day this time. It was nice, actually – Remus found himself talking to the bird as he puttered about the house dealing with his books and the articles and stories he wrote for money. The phoenix was a good listener, and Remus decided he knew why Dumbledore had him.

"I just don’t think I’m ready for people again, Fawkes," he said, feeding the phoenix a biscuit. He had some vague memory that phoenixes were supposed to eat ambrosia or starlight or something, but Fawkes seemed to enjoy the biscuit well enough. "It’s better for everyone that I just stay here."

Fawkes pecked him on the wrist, and Remus couldn’t decide if it was supposed to be affectionate or admonishing.

"Want another biscuit?" he asked after a moment, to hedge his bets.

****

On Friday morning Remus found another letter waiting for him in the kitchen, held in one of Dumbledore’s veined old hands.

He stopped in the doorway, caught between anger at being intruded upon and relief that he’d gotten dressed before coming downstairs.

"Good morning, Remus," Dumbledore said kindly.

Remus hesitated for only a moment before his manners kicked in. "Good morning, Headmaster. Would you like some tea?" Regardless of the fact that Dumbledore was trying to convince him to do something that he was certain could only end badly, the Headmaster had always been kind to him, and the least he could do was be civil in return.

"Yes, thank you. That would be lovely."

Remus made the tea and they sat at the table in silence. After a moment of contemplative sipping, Dumbledore held out the envelope.

Remus stared at it.

"Please do me the favour of reading it, Remus," the Headmaster said when it was obvious he had no intentions of taking it. "I’ll stop pestering you after this, I promise."

Remus sighed a little, and took the envelope.

It wasn’t a letter, this time. It was a photograph, of a young boy with James’s hair and Lily’s eyes and Gryffindor Quidditch robes, smiling sheepishly as he tried to flatten his fringe over a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead.

Remus stopped breathing.

"He’ll be going into third year," Dumbledore said, not looking up from his tea cup, but Remus already knew that. He’d counted off each of Harry’s birthdays as the years passed, always tempted to send a present or a card or something but knowing he wasn’t allowed. Half the time he wouldn’t have been able to afford it, anyway.

There was a newspaper clipping in the envelope as well, of a wild-haired sunken-eyed madman that Remus wouldn’t have recognised if it hadn’t been for the headline that screamed SIRIUS BLACK ESCAPES FROM AZKABAN. He skimmed the article, the tea cold and leaden in his stomach, but it didn’t tell him anything he wanted to know.

He put the two items down on the table and stared at them, wondering what Harry was like. If he remembered his parents. If he was scared. If he liked Hogwarts. What position he played.

Sirius had been so proud when he’d been named godfather. It still seemed inconceivable, really, that that love had ever died.

Dumbledore put his cup down, the quiet scrape of china against wood shaking Remus out of his reverie.

"I’ll need someone to substitute during the full moon," Remus said.


End file.
